You only get one chance at a first impression. The circumstances
of my first encounter with Düsseldorf could not have been more favourable.
When I first stepped off the train in Hauptbahnof I was in the middle of
a particularly memorable long-distance, international pub-crawl. Those were
the days.

Düsseldorf is, in many ways, an odd mixture. The capital of Germany's most industrialised
state, in the heart of an area of steel and chemical works, yet home to a sizeable
upper middle-class population. These can be seen in their designer suits and fur coats
strolling along the Königsallee, the poshest shopping street in the whole of Germany.

Physically, the maze of busy roads is counterbalanced
by the large pedestrianised Altstadt, which manages to be one of the country's liveliest
and most-used city centres. Here everything is on a human scale with shopping and
entertainment both well provided for.

The Altstadt is jokingly known as Germany's longest bar and this isn't far short of
the truth. There are an enormous number of pubs within its boundaries. For a night
out, there are few places to rival it in the whole of Europe, if you're after decent
beer. The locals certainly seem to have a good time. The jokey atmosphere in many
pubs should help to dispel misconceptions about Germans' lack of humour and general
dourness. The waiters are sometimes entertainment in themselves, with their cheeky
comments (I wouldn't try asking for water in Zum Uerige). Dusseldorf's best pubs are
amongst the best pubs in Germany.

Happily, for anyone wanting to try out a few altbiers, the city has an enviable public
transport system of trams (both on the surface and underground), as well as good train
connections. So, no excuse for drinking and driving.

Düsseldorf
Alt

Which is the best Alt?
A question I always ask myself on visits to the city is "which is the
best alt?". It speaks volumes about my innate indecisiveness that I
am, to this day, unable to provide you with a definitive answer. One day,
I'm convinced that Füchschen is top dog. Next visit, the Uerige beer
is such a delight that I have to revise my opinion. On a particular day,
Schlüssel will hit the spot so precisely that I can't imagine any other
beer ever matching it. Other times, nothing can surpass a glass of Schumacher.
Go there, try the beers and see if you can help me resolve this riddle.

What is Alt?
Düsseldorf is the centre of one of the most interesting beer regions of
Germany, because here, more than anywhere else, the pre-19th Century top-fermenting
tradition has been kept alive. In contrast to Cologne, where Kölsch has,
to some extent, mimicked the paleness and softness of pils, altbier has
retained much of its individuality in terms of colour and flavour. Pretty
well every pub in the city sells alt and even the most commercial versions
could never be mistaken for a conventional lager.

The altbiers of Düsseldorf are the classic examples of the style: copper in colour,
dry and with a long hoppy finish. Complex, yet drinkable beers, Düsseldorf alts (I
mean here those from the brewpubs) are as superior to caramel-coloured industrial
alts as cask-conditioned beer is to keg. All four brewpubs sell bottles to take away
(some litres some half litres), but the only way to taste alt is on draught, straight
from a wooden barrel.

How is Alt brewed?
Superficially, in colour and flavour, alt has much in common with the pale
ales of Britain or Belgium. However, the method of brewing alt, which includes
an initial fast, warm top-fermentation followed by a long of period lagering
at a low temperature, is in fact a hybrid. (You can see on some of the labels
the confusing term 'top-fermented lager beer' - a statement which appears
to be a contradiction in terms.) The result is a beer which combines some
of the roundness of a bottom-fermenting beer with the more complex fruity
flavours of an ale.

There can be no doubt that the style has developed over the years, undergoing the
type of industrialisation which occurred in London, Burton, Munich and Pilsen. The
pre-industrial beers were probably darker, cloudy and with perhaps a touch of smokiness
(I'm not 100% sure about this one - it depends on exactly how they kilned the malt),
imparted by older methods of malt production.

After coming under considerable pressure from bottom-fermented beers in the first
half of this century, the style has hung on in well in some parts of the Rhineland.
Yet despite its continued popularity in some strongholds, the
market share of alt is still declining, dropping from from 3.6% to 2.9% between
1992 and 2002. In the context of a beer market which is generally in decline, the
percentage drop in altbier volumes is even greater.

Düsseldorf Breweries
Düsseldorf is lucky enough to still retain four long-established pub breweries, which
produce almost exclusively altbier. In addition there are a couple of large commercial
breweries in the city and more in the area around. For more details about these, go
to my Düsseldorf brewery page.

Düsseldorf
Pubs

Thankfully, along with the beer style, some of the traditional pub breweries
have also survived. These offer both excellent gravity-served beer and regional
food in lively, friendly surroundings. This is very welcome in North Germany
where, in general, the pubs are modern, boring bars with little sense of
style or tradition.

In many respects, the pub breweries of Düsseldorf have more in common with
the beerhalls of Bavaria or the Czech Republic than with the everyday establishments
around them. The customers are the same wonderful mix of all ages, classes
and genders. Truly places where all of the city is to be seen. Unfortunately,
such places are relatively few in number, even in Düsseldorf and, with a
couple of notable exceptions, the city centre has little else to offer those
in search of a genuine atmosphere.
What have I included in this guide?
This is a list of a some of the better pubs and bars in in the Düsseldorf.
I do not claim that it is an exhaustive catalogue of even just the bars
in Düsseldorf's Altstadt. I have not attempted to find the most stylish
or fashionable posing locations; if you want to know a cool place to drink
Corona straight from the bottle, I suggest that you look elsewhere. I have
compiled this guide with the beer drinker in mind.

My main criterion for inclusion is the beer sold. I have tried to list bars
selling as many different beers as possible, though with an emphasis on
those brewed locally. After beer, the most important consideration is the
atmosphere. If you have read any of my other guides, you will already know
that I favour authenticity, tradition and simplicity when it comes to pub
design. Though I have been known to fall for stylish and modern, if done
well.

Unfortunately, as in a lot of North Germany, Düsseldorf is home to countless
bland bars, with very little to recommend them, especially in the city centre.
The décor is in a dull international style, which manages to make some of
Britain's clumsily modernised pubs look interesting and cosy. The bars detailed
below are exceptions to this depressing observation.

As is usual in Germany, Düsseldorf bars of any size serve meals, often quite
traditional in nature and usually pretty good value.

How Alt is served
Altbier is served in stubby 0.25l glasses delivered by a blue-clad Köbes,
as the waiters are known here, looking appropriately more like brewery workers.
Constantly reloading their aluminium trays with beers, they circulate dropping
fresh glasses of alt down in front of anyone who looks in need of a new
one. They keep score by putting a pencil mark on your beermat. When it's
time to pay, they simply count the marks and multiply it by the beer price
- fairly simple to do when you only sell a single beer. Currently, the price
is around 1.40 for 0.25l.

At a neighbouring table in Zum Uerige, I once saw an irate father discover
that his young son had been playfully scribbling extra pencil marks on his
beer mat. He was not a happy man.

Small one-room pub with central bar in a modern building. Barrel tables,
wood-panelled walls. Large wooden cut-outs of household cavalry men on the wall! Old
English cider advertising mirror - slightly bizarre decor. It's like a mixture of
a tastelessly modernised English pub and a typical bland modern German bar.

Recommended because of the unfiltered pils it has on draught. Piano by the window,
fruit machines on the back wall.

Pilsner Urquell is a small pub, which has obviously been
recently converted from a shop quite recently (a much better idea than the
reverse). The front room has a long bar (including the cooking area) along
one side. At the rear is another small room.

The staff and the food are genuinely Czech (mm.. those bread dumplings) along with
most of the drinks. As well as the obvious beer, this includes the spirits Becherovka
and Borovicka, a Slovak variation on the gin theme.

Despite it's recent conversion, it has a pretty cosy atmosphere and seems to be
winning a place in the hearts of many of the local inhabitants. It provides an interesting
contrast to the German food and top-fermented beer available in the altbier pubs.

This rambling and justly famous brewpub is located on the
corner of a busy shopping street in the Altstadt.

To the right of the entrance is an L-shaped taproom with beautiful stained
glass windows depicting old Düsseldorf scenes and carved wooden panels with
similar motifs. The walls are stained in various interesting shades of brown,
presumably by a combination of beer and nicotine. Here you can watch the
barrels come up by lift from the cellar, be tapped, very quickly emptied
and then removed again. A heart-warming sight. The ceiling above the area
for the barrels has an intriguing set of stains which must have been occurred
when overactive casks were tapped.

There is another small room to the left of the main entrance and a more
cavernous drinking area to the rear. By the entrance is the usual take away
section, where bottles and barrels are on sale.

The outside seating seems to be gradually taking up the whole of the street running
down the side of the pub. Immediately outside are the usual standup tables - handy
for a quick bit of refreshment while shopping. Across the street are beer garden
style tables and benches, offering the sheer luxury of sitting under the trees with
a glass of alt.

The waiters are remarkably cheeky and give anyone asking for something other
than beer a very hard time. ('Water? That's in the Rhine.') If you don't
want them relentlessly taking the mickey out of you, stick to beer. All
ages, sexes and classes come here, many stopping off during shopping. A
classic which is undoubtedly one of the very best pubs in the whole of Germany.
The only negative feature is that you have to pay for the toilets.

The Weizen is a bit of add oddity and Zum Uerige, despite its tiny size is one
of the few north German breweries to produce a wheat beer. Given the waiters' reluctance
to serve any liquid other than alt, it's amazing that it can survive.

Fans of "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" might be interested to learn that one scene in the
first series was shot in the back bar of Zum Uerige.

Weissen Bären is one of many pubs on Bolkerstrasse. It's a long, thin, one-roomed
place. The bar, which runs along one wall, has an attractive carved wooden cabinet,
that looks as if it dates from the last century. The part where you stand your drinks
or lean your elbows is much more modern, but still wooden. The walls are lined with
benches which have fixed high tables in front of them - not exactly the most comfortable
or flexible form of seating. At the back there is a pool table.

It's a bit gloomy and the thunderous rock music could hardly be called relaxing.
Somewhere for people with hard backsides and strong nerves. There are a
few standing tables outside on the street.

The relatively narrow frontage of this building disguises
the size of this pub, which rambles backwards through a variety of rooms
to the brewery at the rear. The main bar is placed centrally at the front
and has a standing taproom to one side of it. If you're after a pubby atmosphere,
it's best not to venture any further than this. The rear sections are more
restauranty, but eating is not compulsory.

The brewery itself can be observed through a glass wall. It has the usual
collection of shiny copper equipment which so impresses us beer obsessives.
There are a few standup tables outside on the pavement, when the weather
permits.

Like most of the buildings in the street, the original pub was destroyed in the war.
It's been done in a fairly sympathetic style, like much of central Düsseldorf,
which is one of the reasons I like the city so much. However, the interior must have
been refurbished since reconstruction in the 1950's: It all looks a bit too new inside:
so much pine can be glaring on the eye before a few decades of wear have toned the
colour down a shade or three.

It can be a bit of a disappointment after visiting the better and more traditional
brewpubs, but it does grow on you. The food is excellent in an extremely
German way - uncomplicated and in large portions. The menu usually includes
a couple of items prepared using their own alt.

Unlike the other brewpubs, most of the service is performed by waitresses
rather than waiters. I've always appreciated their motherly good humour
and great tolerance of our kids. The beer isn't bad, either, coming, as
usual, directly from oak casks on the bar.

This
is Schumacher's second outlet in the city centre, very much in the style
of the pub-breweries, though not brewing itself. It's been owned by the
Schumacher family since 1902.

Like Schlüssel across the road, it was bombed out during the war and
reconstructed in the 1950's. The three houses of which it previously consisted
were rebuilt as a single structure. In the right hand bar, there are framed
newspaper cuttings telling the story of destruction and rebirth, with poignant
photos of pre-war Bolkerstraße.

Both outside and inside, it's very similar in style to its neighbour, though
on a smaller scale. Here the size of the frontage is not deceptive. to the
left of the entrance a standup taproom, to the right and rear restaurant-like
rooms. As you can see from the photo to the left, the oak barrels sit on
a magnificent copper bar counter. The interior still has a slightly new
feel, with the pine fittings not having had time to develop the friendlier
dark colouring that comes with age.

The beer is served from the wood, just as in the brewery, and tastes equally as good,
even if the atmosphere is not quite up to the same standard. Though it is handily
placed bang in the pedestrianised part of the Altstadt. Traditional meals.

Originally three separate pubs were on this site, until 1704,
when they were combined into one. The current building is a large establishment,
in the beerhall style. Despite the name, it's no longer a brewery. It last
brewed in the early 1970's.

It may be on the bland side of 50's design, but it least it has retained
a multi-room layout. There are the standard pine-topped tables and tiled
floor, but overall it's rather bourgeois and the customers mostly middle-aged.
The bar itself is enormous and runs almost the whole length of the pub.
As is usual in this town, the blue-clad köbes are there to deliver a beer
to your table whenever your glass is empty.

Altestadt is a street full of boozers and one of them is this tiny corner pub.
There are only 2 tables and a couple of bar stools for seating, yet somehow they
manage to have live music here. Maybe the band take up position in the toilets.

It's fitted out in a simple, but tasteful manner with wooden fittings and
a tile floor. The windows are unusual: the bottom third of each is etched
with the name of a spirit, the middle third with the name of a country and
the top with various coloured culinary symbols, such as corkscrews, beer
taps, etc. I've no idea what the meaning of it is, but it's attractive enough.
It reminds me of the sort of decoration you would see in Interhotel bars
or HO restaurants built in the 1960's (if anyone can remember such things
now).

A former brewery which is on the same street as Füchschen, this pub has been modernised
to appeal to a principally younger market. It still has large wooden tables, but
none of the odd old paintings and prints. Being opened into basically one large
room hasn't done the general atmosphere any favours.

Düssel Alt has now been replaced by Füchschen. This has its good and
its bad side. On the one hand, you've lost the chance to try a different
Alt and it makes popping in Zur Uel pretty pointless when Füchschen itself
is only a couple of doors away. On the the other hand, it does stay
open four hours later than its brewpub neighbour. No need to head off home
at midnight.

It's worth looking in to see what can happen to a good old boozer in slightly
clumsy hands. Not a case of total wanton vandalism, so it could presumably
be rescued, should anyone have the will to do so.

A wonderful, friendly old pub-brewery with an impressive wooden interior. By the
entrance is a small taproom with seats grouped around barrel tables. The pub then
meanders back towards the brewery itself through a series of rooms with large wooden
tables. The atmosphere is very relaxed and open, with chance neighbours at a table
soon striking up conversations. The customers are a great mixture of young and old
from all social levels.

The beer, in keeping with the general level of tradition and excellence, is one
of the best Düsseldorf altbiers. The food is good, good value, local, but not very
suited to vegetarians. It sells bottles and barrels to take away and if you sit
close to the door you can see a happy procession of customers wheeling barrels out
to their waiting cars. If only you could do this in every city. The inhabitants
of Düsseldorf don't know how lucky they are.

At the rear is a courtyard where you can sit outside in the Summer. Behind this
is a diminutive brewery, quietly producing the liquid delight for the pub in front
of it.

Schumacher is the only one of Düsseldorf's brewpubs
which isn't in the Altstadt. That said, it isn't exactly out in the sticks,
being between the main station and the town centre proper. Behind the imposing
stone facade is a huge pub-brewery with a selection of large rooms laid
out with big pine tables. By the entrance is a smaller and more basic taproom,
designed for standing drinking. Also at the front of the building is a takeaway
section where bottles and small barrels can be bought. At the rear is a
small courtyard drinking area, bounded on its opposite side by the miniature
tower brewery.

The main rooms are decorated with a series of oil paintings depicting scenes from
the history of the city. A particularly charming example is of Russian soldiers
marching down Ratingerstraße (which, oddly, is the location of one of the other
pub breweries, Füchschen) in 1814.

The draught beer is served directly from oak casks and is of consistently
excellent quality. Traditional Rhineland food is served in typically German-sized
(large) portions.

Something that sets Paulaner apart from the majority of German breweries is its
estate of pubs spread across the country. Before the war, it was usual for the Munich
breweries to have a "Brauereiausschank" in most of the large German cities.
For some reason, all except Paulaner have given up on the idea. A shame, and a missed
opportunity, as such pubs offer the beer lover a chance to sample Bavarian beer
without a journey to the deep South.

Paulaner's Düsseldorf showcase is a large corner pub wedged in between two
roads not far from the main railway station. Being so closely associated with the
brewery, it naturally serves both beer and food of a very high standard. It has
two rooms; one more a drinking area around the island bar and a second more intended
for eating. The plain pine interior is still a bit glaring, but just give it a few
years.

The Bavarian food is authentic and very good value (any true carnivore should try
the sausage plate). The beer is, of course, excellent, but be careful of ordering
a dark beer (Dunkles) as they tend to bring a half litre of Salvator Doppelbock.

Brewery tap of the Frankenheim brewery. Unusually for such places it
employs waitresses instead of the usual blue-clad waiter. In other breaks with tradition,
they have draught pils and even offer vegetarian meals. What is the world coming to.

You can see the logic for Diebels,
the largest producer of alt, in opening their own "Brauereiausschank"
on Bolkerstraße, the pub street of Düsseldorf. It's obviously
intended to resemble the home-brew alt houses close by. There are tiled
floors, a copper stand for the alt barrels, pine-topped tables - all the
usual stuff.

But it's the differences rather than the similarities that are most striking.
A single 20 litre plastic barrel (Schlüssel had a 200 litre wooden
cask on its front bar), TV sets and music. And all in a large single room,
even though it did have distinct areas, including one with standing tables
- in the traditional beerhalls these usually fill a separate taproom. The
outside seating is of wicker chairs and plastic tables - what you find outside
most pubs, but not the home brew ones in Düsseldorf.

If you're in a group (or a giant with a serious drinking problem) you can
have your own 10 litre barrel on your table.

A reasonable try by Diebels, if not quite authentic. Still, it's far preferable
to a standard crappy bar and the alt tasted much better than when I've tried
it elsewhere.

This Uerige outlet is nothing if not unusual. It's located
in the basement of the Carsch-Haus department store, in a food court-style
area. Uerige Treff is a tiny partitioned off space where they've done a
pretty good job of creating a miniature version of the brewpub. And, just
like in the original, the beer is served directly from oak barrels. The
bottled beer is, unlike in the main pub, unfiltered.

Germany is such a civilised country - where else can you get such high quality refreshment
in a shop?

Zum Gatz is sadly much more typical of German bars than most
of the others on this page. The interior is a mixture of formica and false
brick that reminds you just how stylish the 1970's were. The pub is long
and thin with benches along the walls. The prominence given to the TV and
slot machine highlights the priorities here.

There are only two things going for it,as far as I can tell: it's a chance to try
Gatzweiler Alt by gravity (there's an odd metal barrel than resembles a miniature
oil drum on the bar) and it has a skittle alley in the basement. Oh, and it's very
handily placed close to several other pubs on Ratingerstraße. Make that three
things, then.
***** HAS BEEN CONVERTED INTO A TAPAS BAR *****